Created To Create

Indulge me as I reminisce

2010-02-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

It was only a year ago. At a speech tournament. I can't remember if I had given it a lot of thought or if it was really spontaneous. But there we were. An elite few in a deserted classroom seated around a table.
"Ahem." I banged the table. Funny how these funny tables echo so much in these funny classrooms. A bunch of familiar eyes met mine. "Uh." I usually never hesitate to take charge of a situation. For some reason I felt self-conscious. "Well, ladies, I have summoned you here today to present a proposal." I think we joked about having no one to take minutes of this meeting or any other hoity-toity conventionalities that official meetings have, like complementary tissue, water glass and note pad at each setting.
"I want to start a blog."
But of course, everybody knew that already.
"And I want all of you to be authors. We could post about different projects we've completed!"
"With a picture of it." someone added.
"And a list of necessary and optional supplies." interjected someone else.
"Exactly!" I beamed. "We wouldn't just say 'oh hey peeps, look what I made!' It would be informative, providing inspiration and insight in all creative aspects: like in art, sewing, cooking, decorating, photography, floral arranging...ya know what I mean."
TJ, always clever with details, suggested we motion to decide on a Blog name.
"Second the motion."
We wrangled with all sorts of goofy, awkward sounding titles, and somehow came up with "Created to Create".
Steph was put in charge of finding a blog template for it, and I got the domain from Blogger.

Amid much chatter and excitement, our little blog was theorized, and the meeting, successful, was adjourned.

Good times. I still smile when I recall how chaotic it was in that abandoned classroom...

Valentines Day!

2010-02-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

Well I don't know if any of you make valentines for family or friends, but our family does. As long as I can remember, I was making valentines every February. As a result, we have quite a collection of them decorating our house this time of year!

The thing I like about valentines are they can vary so much. There's so many different ways to make them!

Over the past few years, I've done them different ways. I'd like to share some of my ideas with you, and maybe inspire you to make valentines this year for your family.

First of all, supplies. Years ago (we still use them!) my mom made "heart forms" of different sizes out of carboard. Placing them on paper and tracing around them makes a perfect heart! To decorate them, we usually use lace, colored paper, scissors, tape, glue, glitter, ribbons, but more unusual things have found their way onto some valentines...

Here, (I found this idea in a magazine) I used twist-ties to make hearts.

Here, I used pre-made valentines and lace doilies.

For this exciting one, I made hearts of different colors, textures. I also cut out some outlines of hearts. Then I decorated it with glitter glue (great stuff!) and words.

Here I cut out strips of different colored paper and glued them onto a heart, then I cut off the places where the strips overlapped the edges. I then lined the strips with red glitter glue.

For this striped one I used strips of ribbon glued on with a gluestick, but reinforced with Elmer's glue.

This one I covered with lace. The main trouble with beautiful valentines is, Do you cover them up with pen or words on a paper (as seen below)? Or leave them clean, and write on the back?! :D

This year I wanted to make some with hymns or psalms or Bible verses on them. Here's one.

But my favorite was when I made paper to cut my valentines out of. First I made a palette of pinkish colors by mixing reds and white. Then I painted a big peice of cardstock, trying to blend the colors. Then I cut out the hearts. The result was beautifully striped valentines I could do anything with!

Here are some of the finished products: (The middle one I coated with sparkeley nailpolish to make it shine!)

Happy Valentines Day, and Have fun Crafting! :)

Photo Editing...

2009-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Still trying to teach myself...:)

What I did above was edit the colors a little, delete the background, and put the remaining selection over a free background I got online. (someday I'll figure how to make that from scratch though) Then I "vignetted" it by darkening the edges to feature the center of the image. I did that by adding a black layer with low opacity over top and then I added a "layer mask" which basically blocks the effects of the black layer.

If you want to some pretty cool editing without spending any money go to www.gimp.org.

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's what I use right now...

Just download and start taking tutorials!

Ivy Pot and Autumn Wreath

2009-10-12T13:29:00.001-07:00

I made this with cable, floral wire, a styrofoam cup, ivy clippings, and an earthen flower pot. You can use a pliable twig, actually, instead of cable. Here's what you do: Take the twig, bending it, stab both ends into the upside down cup. Put the cup in the pot. Start wiring the ivy to the twig. Tie a ribbon or random doo-dads to the structure. I stuffed some flowers in there, but I knew they'd wilt very fast without water. The ivy, however, lasts for weeks. Stuff leftover clippings in the pot to cover the cup. I also took a long strand of ivy, looped it, wired it in place and shoved up around the pot so it encircled it. You could use ribbon or that twiney kinda stuff to wrap around the pot, if you want. It looks pretty rad.

I made this wreath last autumn, in early November. The leaves on our trees aren't quite so brilliantly colored yet, but I can't wait to make one again soon!

I used all sorts of random this I found going on our property. If you are planning to decorate for thanksgiving, here's some advice I learned the hard way: You need to gather everything in late October, early November, and string them up to dry. This particular wreath was made fresh, so it withered before thanksgiving came. *Sniff* Notice the pinecone is all small and spikey. That's because I procrastinated gathering pinecones while they were open, dry, and plentiful. If you wait 'til November like I did, they'll be few and far between. BTW, if you spray paint pinecones silver or gold, and then spray them with glitter, they look FABULOUS on your Thanksgiving or Christmas wreaths.

!!! I just had an idea!!! We should have a wreath party! We can all collect as much as we can find on our properties, pick a date, get together and make wreaths! Readers, if this interests you email me at asleadds@gmail.com. :)

Thriftiness!!

2009-09-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful gorgeous hutch thingamy that I bought for $112 dollars at a thrift store. I saw it and fell in love with it several weeks ago. When I returned, it was not there! I raced to the back of the store where they keep their furniture merchandise, and lo and behold!! It had been tucked back against the far wall. Hwahaha. I bought it on August 31st, the very last day it was on sale for 20% off. Woow. And closing time wasn't too far off either. I also found the following items I have so fashionably and elegantly modeled down below.

And awesome black vest missing a few buttons and a gorgeous candelabra thing! The vest is supposed to have four buttons, actually, one was already missing and another promptly popped off as soon as I tried it on. I had to, of course, dress in the rest of the costume I had it in mind for.

I plan to sew some swanky buttons on the vest, clean the wax off the candlestick and repair the hutch a bit. *Sigh* I love thrift stores.

Now for the edifying part of this post:
I all of a sudden had a revelation the other day as to what absurd young ladies like me ought to do while they wait for someone to bother marrying them...SPEND MONEY! Hehe... almost. I decided that I should start using my bank savings (that are rotting away after all) to accumulate furniture and items of necessity for my future castle. Oh, okay, the candles are more asthetic than necessary, but the vest, now, might attract me a rich suitor or something like that. (Do rich suitors like vests? I'd better google that)

But no, really, I'd encourage you girls to look towards finding good deals for necessities for your future home. When you do get married, don't expect to find a whole flurry of great prices just waiting for you. Besides, most "good" deals need repair, (if they don't, how lame is that?!! That leaves out most of the fun!) and you don't want to sit in an empty house with a bunch of delapidated furniture and vests missing half their buttons after your honeymoon. So, there's my sage advice. Think ahead. Be thrifty. Oh and read this blog post of mine...

Knit Dishcloths

2009-06-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Stephanie: Remember when you taught me how to knit one day in the car? I loved it, and even though I didn't have needles, I went home and used two pencils and some yarn, and started knitting! Although, I think my first "project" ended up as a cat toy. :D

For June's Once-a-Month Crafting, I'm posting my Grandma's pattern for Knit Dishcloths! I've made it several times. If you know how to knit, you can make this beautiful wash cloth. If you don't, contact Steph or me, and we'll make sure you learn. :)

Making this pattern, you are starting at one corner and getting bigger and bigger until it's as wide as you want, then getting smaller till you have as many stitches as you started with. It also is unique because it has a cool border edge. When it's finished, it's about 9 inches square, and is good for washing dishes, tables, people, -pretty much anything.

All you need is two knitting needles (size 8-10. I used size 8 for my last one.) and a skein of "Sugar & Cream" cotton yarn (One skein makes 2 dishcloths).

Here's the pattern:
1. Cast on 4 stitches. Knit 4 stitches.
2. Knit 2, yarn over (yo), knit rest of row
3. Repeat #2 until you have 43 stitches on your needle.
4. Knit 1, knit 2 together, yo, knit 2 together, knit rest of row.
5. Repeat #4 until you have 4 stitches left.
6. Bind off knitting those 4 stitches.
7. Cut the yarn, knot it, and weave the end into the edge.

Yarn over: Just put the yarn over the needle between stitches. This adds another stitch.
Knit 2 Together: Put the needle through 2 stitches instead of one, and knit. This makes one stitch out of two.
Bind off: Knit one, knit two, pull the first stitch off the needle over the second, knit three, pull the second stitch off the needle over the third, knit four, pull the third stitch off the needle over the fourth.

It's fun to use different colors of yarn:

Left, a yarn that changes colors on its own. Middle, a solid color. Right, you can also change colors in the middle by tying two ends of the yarn together. (In this case, Grandma used up a bit of blue yarn that was left over.)

Have fun knitting!
p.s. Please comment if you have questions, or if you have a favorite knitting pattern, or if you made this!!!

Maternity Photography

2009-06-08T19:49:00.001-07:00

Friendship Tag Bag

2009-05-25T10:42:00.001-07:00

For this month's Once-a-Month Crafting, I'm posting a craft that makes a great gift any time of year. It's personalized, special and a guarantee friend-pleaser! I also had sooooo much fun making this. It's not just enjoyable for the recipient! :)

I have a list of all the inside-jokes my friend Lindsey and I have. I thought for her birthday I could make for her little reminders of some of the things on the list.

Here's what I did:
I found or created little things that would remind her of the jokes on the list.
Then on little slips of scrapbooking paper I wrote the name of the joke or a quote or what we were doing when we made it up...
Then I attached the tags to the trinkets with yarn and scotch tape.
I placed each trinket in a giftbag with the tags hanging out.

When I gave the gift to Lindsey, she had so much fun pulling out each gift and laughing with me over funny memories!

I encourage you to make a Friendship tag bag. All you need is a little creativity to build this gift, and it sure will bless you and your friend!

Happy Crafting!

Drawing: Fiddle

2009-05-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Well, as some of you may already know, I am really into drawing. Here is a portrait of a fiddle that I drew for my cousins birthday.

The only pencil I used for drawing this was a number 2 pencil. I also used a tortillion for the blending and created a grid so that everything would be perfect in it's sizing.

For me this was a big leap.. I normally just draw faces, so this was something very different! But, I found out that it was actually very fun and refreshing to do something new!

Hope y'all like it!
-Destiny

Father-Daughter Collage

2009-04-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

It's time (or perhaps too late...) for Once-a-Month Crafting!
This month I invite you to make a collage for someone. Don't worry, it really is easier than it looks. :)This is something my sister and I made for Dad's birthday this month. All you need is..

A big piece of posterboard
Some pictures
Some decorative paper (scrapbooking, wrapping, or tissue paper would work well.)
Quotes or little trinkets to make it more interesting and special. (tickets, ribbons, napkins, Bible verses, impromptu slips, you name it!)
a glue stick

Here's what I did:

I used pictures that we had on our computer of Dad and us, and I changed the color of them (using HP Photosmart Premier) to sepia or antique (whichever I thought looked better).
Then I printed them out in color on normal paper and cut them out.
In a Word Processor project I typed some words, put them in different fonts, printed them out on tan-colored paper, and cut them out.
I picked out some Bible verses from one of the "Quote Stacks" I have for scrapbooking, and some paper that I thought would fit the color scheme.
Then I let my sister organize it (where and at what angle to put each picture, etc). This can be the fun part or the frustrating part, however you want to look at it. :D
Then you have to slide everything off and glue each piece onto the posterboard one by one, starting with the bottommost layer, and ending with the top (obviously). Or you can glue each piece on as you organize it, but that's not how we did it.
Then I cut it all out, leaving about a half-inch border around the edge.

I hope you try this. I know your Dad (or whoever else you want to bless by making this for them) will love it! If you do make one (or have made one before), please tell me about it.

Cereal Box Bookmarks

2009-03-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Once-a-Month Crafting! (with Tianna Strom)
For March, I made (as you can see by the title) bookmarks out of cereal boxes! I came up with this idea because
1. Bookmarks are useful and fun to make.
2. The sayings on cereal boxes are sometimes clever or funny.
3. I had a friend who wouldn't eat breakfast very often, so I made some for her as a joke.

Supplies: empty cereal boxes, scissors
What to Do: Cut up the cereal boxes with the scissors! :D It's fun to make them different sizes and shapes. Use your imagination; No two cereal box bookmarks are the same!

Creativity Ideas:

Use the boxtops (or bottoms)
Use the Nutrition Facts!
Use the Side opposite the Nutrition Facts
Look for funny or clever words

Cut out different shapes and sizes
Be fun and random!
Make a Collection (all from one box)
Here are the four boxes I did: Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, Grape Nuts, Cinnamon Life, and Multigrain Cheerios.

Try them out!

Thanks for reading my first post ever!!!

Vintage Wallets

2009-03-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

Vintage} Gift Card Holders|Wallets

I whipped these up. In the pictures, they look kind of messyish but in person, they look old and neat, and they are fun to make!
To make, use paper, thread, paint and stamps!

You can use them yourself, or give them away. They are simple and fun to make!

Fondant

2009-02-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

This is the first and only cake I've ever made with fondant frosting.

You can find a recipe here. There are many variations available, mine was made primarily of marshmellows. ;) It's extremely difficult to work with without an extra-long rolling pin. Try it sometime!

Photo/Drawing

2009-02-05T23:38:00.000-08:00

As you can see, I have combined a photo with a drawing that I did. Since I used the grid system (Alexa mentioned it earlier on one of her post), everything matched up perfectly, and I was able to combine the photo with the drawing, thus creating a realistic face. I drew this portrait using one pencil, a number 2 pencil. I also used a tortillion. A tortillion is simply a cone shaped thing that is made out of paper that looks much like a pencil. It works very well with blending.

This is the original photo.

Grid Drawing

2009-02-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

My very first grid-portrait:

My second:

My fourth (I don't have a picture of the third):

If you closely at this picture, you can see the grid showing through from behind the page!

I'm actually not the first to find out about how to do this. Destiny told me how, so hopefully she'll explain it in one of her future posts. She is a master at shading. You should see some of her work!!! I think everyone should try their hand at it.

This ship drawing was a still-life sketch of mine, not a grid-drawing. It was the first drawing I ever did using more than one pencil. It makes a difference. However, the cool thing about drawing is you can do sooo much with one pencil, and it doesn't require a fortune and a ton of supplies to do. With painting, for example, you have to spend a lot of money, but with drawing, you can be thrifty!!

Shadow Box

2009-02-05T18:52:00.000-08:00

This is a shadow box that I made for my grandfather. I found a pane of glass in our garage and asked my father to build a frame for it. I painted the frame flat black and screwed in a black foam presentation board (equivalent to an expository board), for pinning things to. Next, I took all sorts of pictures and doo-dads that my grandfather had passed down to us in an old case, back from his days in WWII, and mounted them in the Shadow box.

The last step was sliding in the pane of glass. I gave it to Grandpa for Christmas. It was a very enjoyable project! It makes for a ideal gift, because you can personalize it for the recipient.

Welcome

2009-01-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

Suppose you can't decide what to do with yourself. You're just sitting there with no purpose in life, no direction in your day, and a heart of sorrow, blankly looking at your computer screen with a dull, hopeless expression, searching for some inspiration. Well, this blog is for you!!

Personally, nothing brings me more satisfaction than knowing I've been apart of creating something. When I've ended a day of work and have something to show for it, I feel so fulfilled. There's a reason for this, too.

In the beginning, God created everything. Poof. Just like that. Ex nihilo. Out of nothing. And He loved it! He said, "It is good!" Now believe me, when God says "It is good", you'd better listen up. I'm such a perfectionist that I almost never say "It's good" about my work. God's a perfectionist too. God is perfection. It takes a lot for Him to call something good. Only something of and from Himself can be good. And that's why He called the world "good". It's because He poured Himself into it. Genesis tells us that all three persons of the Trinity played a part in the Creation of all things. Can you imagine how much fun God was having with Himself?? Just from the limited knowledge we have of God, and the creation story, there is sooo much we can apply to our imperfect attempts at creativity:

We were made in the image of God. That explains why we are the only creatures that have an intense drive to create, design, construct.
God, by nature, loves to create. And everything He creates is good. That is why we pursue excellence in our creativity, because He is our standard of perfection.
God loves Himself because He has an intimate relation within Himself between the three persons the Father, Son, and Spirit. I can almost imagine God creating the world; The three persons are laughing, pouring themselves into the design of every single molecule, loving each other, complimenting one another on the excellence of the work accomplished. No wonder working with other people is so fun! It's because this is how God does it! :) We love creating things while fellowshipping!

So with all that said, what does this have to with this blog? This blog was founded on the desire to promote all three previously stated things: Creativity, Excellence, and Friendship. TJ, DJ, Karissa, Steph and I all like to create things. And we want to improve our skills in this area, and we want to share with each other and everyone what we've learned, and accomplished. That pretty much sums it all up. I look forward to what awesome creativity we'll see on this site in the near future! Hopefully you will too...

-Alexa, on behalf of all of us blog authors.